Why is Cameron swanning around Africa like some Primark Churchill, playing the hard man? Because he dreams of his own Falklands War

THERE is a good reason why David Cameron was the first British Prime Minister to visit Algeria in over half a century – the place has absolutely nothing to do with us.

Why is Cameron swanning around Africa like some Primark Churchill? Why is he inspecting troops, making speeches and playing the hard man? Because Cameron dreams of his own private Falklands War.

Give him a chance and a whiff of non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and Generalissimo Dave would be as bad as Tony Blair.

Nobody has been keener than Cameron to send servicemen to the dole. And yet nobody is keener to send them off to fight overseas.

And how much easier it must be to play the warrior of Westminster than to confront the very real problems at home.

How ­intractable and endless it all must seem – a flat-lining economy, one million young people stuck on the dole and all those Bulgarians and Romanians digging out their raincoats for a new life in Blighty.

Since Thatcher turned her career around with her Task Force, ­ambitious Prime Ministers have dreamed of the poll-boosting glory of a quick little war fought in some faraway place with somebody else’s sons and daughters.

Gordon Brown didn’t stoop so low. But Tony Blair was only too happy to put his preening ego first. And David Cameron is now sending our boys to Timbuktu.

But should we really have British servicemen in places that most British people could not point to on the map?

What happens in Mali does not threaten British interests and Britain has no links to Algeria – it was the French who brutally turned the place into a colony, savagely repressed the people for 130 years and are up to their berets in the blood of the local people.

It is a tragedy six Brits died at the Amenas Gas Plant massacre in the Sahara desert.

But it’s a dangerous place and it always will be. And that tragedy does not change the fact that by far the greatest terrorist atrocity inflicted on British citizens in recent years was carried out on British soil on July 7, 2005, by suicide bombers who carried British passports.

If Cameron truly wants to confront terror, he would be better off winning hearts and changing minds at home, convincing ­disaffected Muslim youths that they are better off as loyal British subjects, and not the murderous stooges of al-Qaeda.

But that’s too ­difficult. There are no photo opportunities in doing that, so it’s better to roll up the shirtsleeves in Mali. Better to let the desert wind blow through your hair in Algeria.

Sadly, there is no such thing as “non-combat troops.” What happens if they are shot at, Dave?

The special forces in Algeria or the 330 troops (so far) in Mali and neighbouring countries: are they allowed to engage the enemy? Or are they just there for al-Qaeda shooting practice?

Has the war in Afghanistan really taught us nothing? Do we not see the lesson in all those British troops murdered by their Afghan “allies”? The longer we dally in these wretched places, the more they hate us.

It is truly terrifying that our armed forces are under the control of a thin-lipped soft boy who never heard a shot fired in anger.

Once we had Prime ­Ministers who had seen the true human cost of combat.

James Callaghan was a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy in the Second World War and Ted Heath served in the Royal Artillery.

Before them, Anthony Eden won the Military Cross in World War One and Harold Macmillan was wounded three times while serving in the trenches.

But that period of our ­country’s history ended with the prime minister who replaced Jim ­Callaghan – Maggie Thatcher, who saved her political skin by fighting the Falklands War and who has cast her enormous shadow over toy soldiers such as Blair and Cameron.

I don’t actually think that Mali is going to be Britain’s Vietnam. But never mind, Dave. There’s always Syria.